Travel

I NEVER USED TO SAY NO TO A COOL TRAVEL OPPORTUNITY.

But when my husband asked if I wanted to meet up with him on a work trip to Boston, I hesitated. It meant flying by myself with a 5 month old baby, and then traveling with said baby. How much would that change the dynamic of our trip? Would it be so stressful and exhausting that I’d wish we’d just stayed home?

Ultimately, I decided to go.

I figured Boston would be a great place to travel with a baby. It’s compact, walkable, plus people seem to be really family-oriented based on what I’ve seem of Bostonians in the movies. ALWAYS a good way to judge people and places, right? I mean, Mark Wahlburg is from Boston, and he’s all about “saying hi to your mother for me.”

Just the thought of flying with a baby strikes fear in the hearts of parents.

But when my husband asked if baby Arlene and I wanted to meet up with him during a Boston work trip, I said sure. I can do this! I reasoned that I would’ve gone prior to having a baby, so why let that stop me now?

However, as the trip approached, the panic set in. Here’s every fear that raced through my head prior, followed by how it played out in real life.

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Fear: Getting all the crap from the car into the airport.

I hate lugging my own suitcase. How in the hell am I supposed to carry a suitcase, stroller, carseat, diaper bag and live, tiny human through the airport?

I love food.

When I travel, I could pretty much skip any museum or landmark and just hit up restaurants. And coffee shops. And dive bars. And ice cream places.

I think good food makes or breaks a vacation, a birthday, a celebration, or just a meal away from home. It bums me out when people come to my city and eat at an Olive Garden instead of Matt’s Bar or Hola Arepa. Come on, you work hard for the money, so why not spend it on delicious food you can’t get anywhere else?

Outside of this blog, I’m primarily a food and travel writer. I get peppered with emails and texts from people seeking restaurant recs all the time. While I’m well-versed in many U.S. city’s greatest hits, I often find myself double-checking my work.

There is a place I can almost always depend on for good

To me, summer is all about road trips.

And road trip are all about beef jerky, Twizzlers, fun playlists and podcasts.

The biggest hurdle with podcasts is finding one to listen to in the first place. There’s a gazillion out there, so how do you narrow it down?

I posed this question to a bunch of smartypants friends and got so many suggestions that I decided to split up the recs into two separate posts (here’s the last podcast suggestion post). Here’s a bunch more to add to your podcast repertoire.

*And a note on podcast etiquette*Take the time to rate and review the podcasts that you really enjoy. That’s what boosts them in the rankings and helps interested people discover new shows.

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Love, Life, Relationships, Emotions

Dear Sugar
Writers Cheryl Strayed and Steve Almond answer listener’s questions about love, heartbreak, and how to … Read more

A lot of parents like to talk about how lame their lives are post-kids. I get it. I won’t have an actual kid for another three months, and yet I’m already significantly more lame the more pregnant I get. However, I am over adults using kids as their lameness scapegoat. If you want to go to a concert, you can (unless the sitter bails). If you want to join a kickball league, you can. And according to Shanna Singh Hughey, if you want to travel all over Europe and Asia with the little ones, well by-golly you can do that, too.

Last year, she and her husband packed up the kids and headed out on a three-month global adventure. They claim it was a success. Here’s how they did it (plus, what they might do differently next time).